Wiley Blackwell (2017) h/b 560pp £120.00 (ISBN 9781118741290)
You will look in vain for any serious classical content in this collection of essays, just as you would in the films it covers. Of course, not all films are produced with the same intent, but those for the popular market, which is the focus for much of this book, aspire to popularity at least, and blockbuster status at best. As Joseph E. Levine (enthusiastic promoter of the ‘peplum’ films of the late fifties and sixties, a.k.a. ‘sword and sandal’ and ‘beefcake’) observed of Hercules with Steve Reeves, ‘It had musclemen, broads and a shipwreck and a dragon for the kids’, and what more could you possibly want? That’s because the film business, like any other, needs growth to enable investment in future productions.
From the earliest days of commercial cinema in Italy, the lure of the ancient world, and particularly of Rome, was too much for film makers to resist. After all, it offered the possibility of lots of people on screen doing interesting things, like fighting battles, or welcoming triumphant generals. You were also assured of great backdrops, plots to die for, big strong characters who would suffer martyrdom (though almost anything would do) for what is right, the usually exotic bad girl versus the pure and virginal, orgies and mad emperors.
Perhaps the earliest international success was Cabiria, with Maciste, the body-built slave with a big heart. So good was he that it was considered a waste to limit his appearance to just one film, so we have, for instance, Maciste the Clairvoyant, M. the Detective, M. the Tourist (in Mexico), M. the Sleepwalker (all 1917), M. versus M. (1926), M. and the Chinese Trunk (1927). So pick the classics out of that lot.
There was, of course, plenty of source material for these oeuvres, especially given the popularity of the novels like Quo Vadis, The Robe and Ben Hur, which had also been a successful play (the chariot race was played out on stage, with horses on treadmills). But what did they mean? The 1959 remake had problems stemming from the multiplicity of script writers, so the finished film was variously considered to be about: Jewish oppression, American imperialism, decolonisation, the possibility of a Middle East solution post Suez, the Cold War, Hitler’s Final Solution, and Joe McCarthy’s shenanigans. Director William Wyler was hoping for a clear Zionist message. The making of Spartacus similarly provides a good read in P.’s analysis, particularly the manoeuvring of Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton to beef up their parts. As in the case of Ben Hur, the result was mixed messages.
Of course, there are films for all seasons, and the Christianising of the 50’s and 60’s gave way to some deChristianising a few decades later with, for example, Gladiator and Agora. Some have seen, however, a backlash in more recent films like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and an answer to Agora’s Hypatia in The Decline of Empire’s St. Catherine.
There is wide-ranging cover of Greeks and Romans in their various cinematographic reinventions herein, and if you are a (wealthy) classicist into movies, the book will be a real treat, though you might feel, as your reviewer does, that it should be more lavishly and colourfully illustrated, rather than the small-scale monochrome on offer here.
Adrian Spooner